I was in Chicago, back in February, exorcising a devil that has plagued me for the past seven years. My stay in The Windy, and my reason for being there, provided a perfect backdrop to ponder why this world is in such a mess. My conclusion: there are just too many lawyers.

The Chicago Yellow Pages, for example, contains 21 pages of plumbers, but 128 pages of lawyers. Do we really need that many lawyers? I doubt it, but the insidious thing is that they create their own ways of justifying their existence, and then they make us pay for it.

Lawyers are responsible for all the logbook tickets ever issued for not indicating the province or state where a change of duty status had taken place. Why on earth would anyone question which province Hearst is in, when the stop before was Long Lac, and the next was North Bay? (It’s Ontario, for those of you challenged geographically.)

The lawyers write the rules. They may not dream them up, but they translate a lot of good intentions into tiny little paragraphs that explain why you’re $300 lighter and there’s another black mark on your safety profile.

On the flipside of that coin are the lawyers who’ll argue that black is white and white is some undefined shade comprising every color in the spectrum, and therefore it can’t be called white, precisely because of the potential for spectral refraction owing to the atmospheric aberration, and I’m really sorry, your honour, but my client didn’t even see the back of the parked truck he slammed into. A million dollars, please!

My own difficulties began when a chap carrying a metal pole climbed on top of my parked tanker truck one day at a wash facility in Chicago. He managed to touch, with the metal pole, some electrical wires suspended 22 feet in the air, 11 feet above the top of the truck. It was lawyers who convinced the late tank washer’s mother that there was an untold fortune in convincing a jury that I was responsible for the loss of her son. I had failed, they said, to inform the poor sod-who had worked at the tank wash for several years-that there were wires overhead.

The family couldn’t sue the employer, who had gone to a hardware store the day before and bought the metal pole. They came after me, who was expected to know that this pole existed and that it might be used improperly. At the time of the incident, I was in a building 100 feet away picking up
my ticket into the wash bay.

The worst part of the whole legal proceeding, for me, was the calling into question of all of the professional accolades I’ve received over my career, my clean record and my generally professional attitude. They could be used against me in court, I was warned. My lawyer said the jury might hold me to a higher level of accountability because I had worked and acted in a demonstrably professional manner.

Well, bless the kid’s heart, he was good at his job, but my tank washer made a mistake that day. His employer made a mistake in not warning him against using the pole outside. My mistake was getting out of bed. Beyond that, there were no special procedures the wash bay asked me to follow, and no warnings about parking under wires. Still, I’m expected to be my brother’s keeper. (I’d like to know where the lawyers were when that tank wash facility was writing its policy and procedures manual).

And how’s this for a twist: when we finally got to court, the judge reviewed the evidence and concluded that the plaintiffs didn’t have a chance, so they reacted by negotiating a settlement instead. A victory for me? Not really. The “win” cost my insurance company $100,000 US, plus court costs and legal bills.

It seems that lawyers have taken the place of common sense these days. Life doesn’t always unfold according to those tiny paragraphs lawyers love to write. They create the mess in the first place, then expect us to pay them for sorting it all out afterward. I guess we shouldn’t be too hard on them, though; at several hundred dollars an hour, they’re just trying to make a living.